Magnificat: 2/??
Title: Magnificat
Author: lalalive23
Pairing: Belldom
Rating: G
Warnings: A truckload of sass
Summary: AU. 1600's Cremona Italy. When Matt, a master violin maker and player, is offered a large sum of money to create a violin for the son of a Count, his life is changed in the most extraordinary of ways.
Feedback: I LIVE FOR THE APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE
Disclaimer: I don't own Muse. This never happened. Cremona and a lot of the history discussed is legit. I'm taking historical events and people and running away with them.
Note: So I was going through old TLS entries and I found that I put my word count for Nano in the description. I'm not going to do that this year, but it was a great way of giving me a goal to beat. Apparently by chapter 10, I was at 43,000 words or something. Holy shit. I don't even know if I can do that this year, but I am on track to reaching 50k by the end of November. So...there's that. SO FUN HISTORY LESSON PART 2: So basically, violins in the 1600s didn't have chinrests, which is weird and kinda painful but also makes sense because the instrument was based on the lute and the lyre, and those fuckers didn't have chinrests either. Violins did, however, have strings that were made from sheep intestines, called 'catgut,' and were dried and twisted into thin coils. Gross, but actually really awesome for sound. Sorry, sheep. Facts about Dom: Ok, so Dom is based on Count Ignazio Alessandro Cozio di Salaube, who collected the shit out of violins and took notes on their construction, passing them to the Amatus and Stradivari families. Eventually, Stradivari made him a violin called the Messiah. Like...holy shit guys, the god of violin making made him the god of violins. So, this is basically a story about how and why this man started collecting in the first place. TL;DR i love history and music. OK ALSO REALLY IMPORTANT: this first part of this chapter was difficult to write because...well, this Matt is about as personal as you will ever see me get in fiction. So, I'll just see myself out. Cheers to amusedinred for being an incredible beta boo and to everyone commenting/reading. You all are angels and the best nano support ever <3
Previous chapters
When the sun had finally hid itself behind the mountains to the west, Matthew sent his apprentices home with a flail of his arm and a shouted command that they return at dawn the following morning. Each apprentice stood before him to bow, lining up one behind the other to bid their Maestro good evening before running off to dine with their wives, mothers, or bargain with a passing vendor for left over pieces of stock. Bowing slightly to his final pupil, Matthew sighed and ignored the quiet rumble in his stomach, his body urging him to eat though his appetite was nowhere to be found. After the door to the shop had shut, and Matthew stood alone between two pine tables littered with incomplete shells of violins, he rubbed a hand over his face, the stubble on his chin collecting the wood dust from his skin.
In the realm of difficult requests, the Count’s demand was not the most extreme he had encountered. In the Summer of 1668, his father had been approached by a member of the royal court, a spindly man with a face that Matthew found impossible to trust. He demanded a violin laden with jewels, the scroll adorned with rubies and gems the likes of which Matthew had never known existed. Ivory was expected, gold tuning pegs desired, it was such an impossible creation. His father had promised an attempt, but could not guarantee an outcome that suited his wishes - their supplier from Turin rarely brought precious stones, and when he did they were usually out of his father’s price range. It had taken an entire year for the piece to be completed, and his father had nearly run their family deep into debt in his attempts to build an instrument that transcended into finery. And while that piece remained only a difficult item of construction, the Count’s request demanded the violin to be something more than it actually could be.
It took a particular kind of person, a person made for music, to view the violin as a desirable pull. To Matthew it was an item of nostalgia, familial duty and respect, beauty, and art. The build of the violin was precious, but the music…the music was something more. He’d been raised by his father to believe that a violin’s perfection was contained within the look and the feel, that the wood and the craft were what gave the instrument its value. But, during the nights when Matthew would sneak out the window above his bed, when the evenings were dry and the moon would light his path, the evenings when he would run to the shop by himself and hold the instruments his father had made had taught him that construction was only half of the equation. The violin was only has beautiful as the player allowed it to be, only as arresting or magnificent as the player made it sound. The music had to be loved out of the strings, loved into the sound-holes with an affection one would give as though they were laying their new bride onto their marriage bed. If aggression was to be molded into beauty, it was the love that made the instrument sing. One without the other meant the instrument was only half complete.
It went against his very nature to place a violin in the hands of carelessness, to offer nonchalance the opportunity to impose its will on majesty. As a Catholic, he’d been raised by his priest, his mother, and his church to not pass judgement, for he did not have the right. But as a man, as a luthier, he’d earned the privilege to deem a man worthy of the music, and Dominic did not sound even remotely capable.
He found his feet taking him over dusted wood and down a hallway to his private work station, moving his body without his mind engaged within the process. Occasionally he found it strange, that so often his body would will him towards the thing he needed most before his brain could make the choice, but it had been happening long before the stress of adulthood and business had fully consumed him and so he’d learned to give in to the sensation rather than question his own volition. Within seconds of entering the room, he was pulling a violin from a small bookcase next to his prized cabinet. It was, by comparison, his most traditional piece, one of the first he’d made when he turned eighteen and spent weeks trying to discern how best to fix the gut cables into the pegs. There was no way he could sell it, his own personal experiment that changed the way his father continued production until his death, and so he’d stained it his favourite shade of ruddy brown, and watched the way the Willow transformed from such a dull tan into a blood red glow, deciding then to only use it for his personal use.
And so he pulled his horse hair bow from the wall peg and began to play. He played as he always did, with full bow length and an open soul that begged the violin to contain all his rage in its small body. He played the way he always did, until his fingers stung, until the blade of his right shoulder felt as though it would tear through his skin and spill blood down his back and ruin his shirt. He played until the tears burned behind his eyes, he played for his father, he played for himself; he played as though he were praying for the word of God to shatter his windows and engrave an answer to his questions into the plate of his chest.
It always started slowly, the outpouring of sentiment that stretched from his shoulder to his fingers and into the atmosphere, a deluge that broke past the walls of propriety and saturated the air with its sound. If speech died, if words and the voice of man were silenced, it would be music that would carry thought and feeling to the ear. What manner of man, so primitive and base, discovered that emotions were not just mere constrictions of the heart, but were a language so easily translated into sound? The heart was the metronome of life, guiding the emotion and the music, providing the rhythm for man and so few could truly see its worth.
Perhaps what he loved most, perhaps buried under years of self-tutelage and decades of developing an affair with an instrument that, for all intents and purposes, was entirely one sided, was that no matter how hard he pressed his strings, how deeply he poured his aggression into the bow and tore its hair, the violin always turned the music into love. Every song, every note, every single brush of the bow transformed violence into passion, sorrow into joy, and hate into love. If he were an uneducated man, a man holding the instrument without any conception as to how it was made, he would call it magic - he would resolutely declare that the physics of the machine held emotions within its core and only released them until it felt they could adequately please humanity.
And deep within the back of his mind, behind years of disappointment and harsh confrontations of reality, he still hoped there was a person who could do this for him, a person so like his instrument with the ability to receive emotion and give it back tenfold, someone who could turn fear and hate into exquisite sensations - someone who made the art of living unbearably sublime.
Only when his arm went stiff, his neck coated with a new layer of sweat and his soul exhausted, did he drop his violin on the shelf and sit in the plush, velvet chair at his desk. Collarbone burning from an hour’s worth of pressure, he smiled at the pain and laid his hands on his desk to admire the dark purple marks that had engrained themselves to his calloused fingertips. How like therapy it was, to release the core of the soul and experience the aftershock in silence. How like confession it was, the baring of the soul and the sins only to feel the freedom in the immediate aftermath. How wonderfully like worship music truly was.
Eventually, he placed his head in his hands and breathed deep, exhaling just as long, and let himself drift into a dreamless, black sleep.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The sounds of abrupt coughing, caught somewhere between polite acknowledgement and impatient disdain, woke Matthew with a start. With a jolt of his spine, he lifted his head from his arms, surroundings blurred with sleep and confusion, and released a soft grunt of contempt. It took several seconds to ground himself in reality, his eyes focusing on the things in front of him, the rusted post-setters and the window above his desk, pouring soft light through its dusted glass. Leaning back in his chair, he brought his wrist to his mouth, wiping residual saliva away, before turning to the man in the door with a glare.
He seemed so out of place, this stranger, as he shifted from foot to foot, his patent leather shoes grown filthy just by walking through the shop. It seemed as though he wore a grimace with a level of comfort that seemed unfit for such a brightly colored doublet, the deep red cloth and its white embroidery a stark contrast to his gloomy disposition.
'Can I help you?' Matthew asked, apathy seeping into his voice like polish to thirsty wood.
The man coughed again and bowed slightly, the motion itself an awkward jilt of his back as though he were acting out of resigned duty rather than his own desire. It seemed as though an invisible force had thrown him swiftly forward and raised him in an instant, turning him into a comical toy.
'Benvenuto, signore. I am Count Ignazio's personal page. I am here to collect you and bring you to his residence.'
Matthew blinked at him once before nodding in understanding, coming to rise from the chair with a groan.
‘Do you mind giving me one moment?’ he asked. The words fell from his mouth with a practiced politeness, though he headed for a small closet on the right side of the room and pulled a white, linen shirt a peg without waiting for an answer. He stripped without a pretense of shyness, removing his red shirt swiftly and dropping it to the floor. From the doorway, he heard the man release an offended gasp and mutter, ‘signore,’ before shuffling. Not bothering to look in his direction, Matthew pulled the new shirt over his head and assumed the man had turned around. They always did, men sent to gather him for some missed engagement after falling asleep at the shop, men who fixed him with a quizzical brow to wordlessly probe him why he had not gone home, why he never left, why he let the phantoms of his past linger with him through the night.
As usual, he slipped the shirt over his head and said nothing, tucking the shirt into his waistband before placing his own leather doublet over his shoulders. They never deserved an answer, for these were personal questions that went beyond polite inquisition and into familial worry. He was not obliged to answer and so he left them to their own absurd speculation.
The page coughed and began to speak.
‘Just wear whatever you have that is best, signore.’
Matt paused in lacing his doublet and rolled his eyes.
‘He shall receive me in whatever I choose to wear. We can’t all be adorned in satin,’ he muttered.
Walking with heavy footsteps towards the door, the sound of his leather boots echoing through the room, he tapped the man on his shoulder and gestured for him to lead the way.
He followed him through the shop, tossing his polish rag onto a table as he passed, gathering his measure tape and notepad in one swift motion. As they pushed the doors open, wide into the alley, Matthew breathed deep into his lungs, taking the dustless air into his blood. Rounding the corner, Matthew could not help chuckle.
‘No carriage?’ he asked gently.
The man fixed him with a scowl and Matthew released a loud snort at the man’s discontent. He wondered briefly if a carriage had not been sent for him because the Count had learned his lesson or if he simply did not want to dote on Matthew after he had so willingly, and easily, wounded his pride. In the back of his mind, he knew it was the latter, that the Count was a stately man who valued spectacle over practicality, and Matthew knew to keep to himself the truth that the Count was not the first of such encounters that he had experienced. There were others, many who came before him and many who would come after, who would foolishly make a show of themselves regardless of their audience while Matthew simply smiled out of obliged respect and waited for them leave his life as swiftly as they came.
The Count’s residence was a large villa to the east of town, towards the hazelnut fields of Massarotti and tucked behind trees and a large pathway flanked with a grassland Matthew imagined would contain sunflowers during the summer. To walk the distance from the shop to the villa took only thirty minutes, a short time that offered Matthew no opportunity to prepare for his meeting with the Count’s son, no time to replace his misgivings with the barriers of professionalism. Approaching the villa with quick steps, he straightened his back, lining his spine with the mental armor he wore when entering the home of the pretentious elite. It was a skill he had spent years perfecting, and the change in his demeanor was indiscernible to the untrained eye.
A large door beneath a wide archway opened upon their approach, a stately looking man there to greet them with stern lines fixed upon his face. Matthew opened his mouth to speak, but the pageboy merely lead him inside, the man shutting the door behind them. He was guided silently through a hallway adorned with fine wallpaper and large paintings of who he imagined were deceased family members and portraits of the Count’s wife. There was no time to admire the work, left only to absorb in passing as he was guided into a large room in the center of the home, which he assumed served only the purpose of receiving guests.
In the center of the room, a tall, blonde man turned to greet Matthew, a bored expression painted over his features. He signed, and waved the page away.
‘Thank you, Giacomo. That will be all.’
With a curt bow, Giacomo turned abruptly and left the room with brisk footsteps that resonated down the hall.
With a quirk of his eyebrow, Matthew slowly felt an unusual coil in his stomach, a thrill of excitement and anxiety at the realization that this was the Count’s son and that he had willingly allowed them to be alone together in a room. It brought a smirk to his mouth, this boy’s impropriety and his casual negligence of the rules of nobility. How interesting he made himself appear, how very interesting indeed.
‘My name is Dominic,’ he said, not bothering to extend his hand. ‘I only ask that you make this quick. I have a life I’d like to continue.’
How interesting he made himself appear and, oh, how swiftly he made the impression collapse like an ancient monument.
Stepping forward, Matthew pulled his measure tape from his pocket and cleared his throat.
‘With pleasure. Extend your right arm.’
‘Give me your name, signore. I would prefer to not have a stranger become so intimately familiar with my body.’
Matthew laughed. ‘Your concept of intimacy is skewed, I believe.’
‘Your name,’ Dominic said, gravely.
‘Did your father not tell you?’ Matthew asked, his voice light and casual.
Dominic remained silent, grey eyes fixing him with a cool stare. It was clear his father had, he simply wanted to hear the words from his own mouth.
‘Matthew Guarneri. Your right arm, please.’
There was a short hesitance in the moments between Dominic’s concession and the raising of his arm. Matthew nodded slightly and stepped forward, able to gauge the length of his arm with a single glance of his eye, using the tape only to be as accurate as possible. There was a rigid stillness, a practiced elegance to the way Dominic held himself, and it went against Matthew’s better judgement to admit, silently and within himself, that the boy’s posture would be ideal for violin performance. He supported his arm from the shoulder, the forearm and wrist presented with a natural balance that came only from a strong shoulder and bicep. But there left little room for emotional performance, and, like a horse that was a thoroughbred, it would be difficult for him to break his hold on his emotions, to break the restraint he had spent years building in the name of nobility to truly feel the music he would be playing.
‘It’s rather silly of my father, don’t you think, to give me an instrument as a means of distraction?’ Dominic asked, casually, addressing Matthew without meeting his eye. ‘A forced redirect of interest never did anyone any good.’
‘Perhaps,’ Matthew said, airily, ‘you aren’t giving the instrument enough credit.’
‘Credit?’ Dominic, scoffed. ‘It’s an instrument, it doesn’t need credit.’
‘Then,’ Matthew said, rolling his tape back up, ‘you will be destined to fail.’
‘Is that a challenge?’ Dominic said, head snapping to look at Matthew’s features.
It was Matthew’s turn to ignore his gaze as he wrote the numbers on his parchment.
‘It is whatever you perceive it to be, though it will always be honest.’
‘Do you mock me, signore?’ Dominic asked, though there was no air of challenge in his tone.
‘I am merely stating fact. Whether you choose to perceive it as an insult or a casual assessment of someone constructing an instrument in your name is your choice.’
Dominic eyed him conspicuously, taking his time to speak. In the silence, Matthew began drafting plans and notes for his violin, allowing his imagination to run wild with possibility.
‘I could have you arrested for your transgression,’ he finally said.
Matthew sighed, exasperation boiling his blood. ‘Yes, you and your father have made this abundantly clear,’ he said, bored with the exchange. ‘Did you have any requests for the instrument? Family crest in ivory, carving on the back, tuning pegs, strings, anything?’
Clearly taken aback with the subject change, Dominic went silent. Matthew peered at him over the parchment and waited for his answer. When none came, he took the opportunity to speak again.
‘This is going to be your personal instrument,’ he said, slowly. ‘Once the draft is complete and the piece is finished, I shall burn the notes and the design plan. It will be one of a kind. Did you not consider this, signore?’
There was an air of tension between them, though it was not uncomfortable, merely two strong men challenging each other in order to best assess their character.
Eventually, Dominic opened his mouth to speak with a sly grin on his face.
‘Make it as you see me,’ he said, calmly.
Matthew cocked his eyebrow, confused. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Construct your perception of me on this violin. I want your truth, not my father’s. I shall have Giacomo come collect you. I am confident you can find your way home without his service?’
He said the words so quickly, Matthew did not have an opportunity to process his request before Dominic had left through a private doorway, leaving nothing but tension and the scent of musk in the air.
Author: lalalive23
Pairing: Belldom
Rating: G
Warnings: A truckload of sass
Summary: AU. 1600's Cremona Italy. When Matt, a master violin maker and player, is offered a large sum of money to create a violin for the son of a Count, his life is changed in the most extraordinary of ways.
Feedback: I LIVE FOR THE APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE
Disclaimer: I don't own Muse. This never happened. Cremona and a lot of the history discussed is legit. I'm taking historical events and people and running away with them.
Note: So I was going through old TLS entries and I found that I put my word count for Nano in the description. I'm not going to do that this year, but it was a great way of giving me a goal to beat. Apparently by chapter 10, I was at 43,000 words or something. Holy shit. I don't even know if I can do that this year, but I am on track to reaching 50k by the end of November. So...there's that. SO FUN HISTORY LESSON PART 2: So basically, violins in the 1600s didn't have chinrests, which is weird and kinda painful but also makes sense because the instrument was based on the lute and the lyre, and those fuckers didn't have chinrests either. Violins did, however, have strings that were made from sheep intestines, called 'catgut,' and were dried and twisted into thin coils. Gross, but actually really awesome for sound. Sorry, sheep. Facts about Dom: Ok, so Dom is based on Count Ignazio Alessandro Cozio di Salaube, who collected the shit out of violins and took notes on their construction, passing them to the Amatus and Stradivari families. Eventually, Stradivari made him a violin called the Messiah. Like...holy shit guys, the god of violin making made him the god of violins. So, this is basically a story about how and why this man started collecting in the first place. TL;DR i love history and music. OK ALSO REALLY IMPORTANT: this first part of this chapter was difficult to write because...well, this Matt is about as personal as you will ever see me get in fiction. So, I'll just see myself out. Cheers to amusedinred for being an incredible beta boo and to everyone commenting/reading. You all are angels and the best nano support ever <3
Previous chapters
When the sun had finally hid itself behind the mountains to the west, Matthew sent his apprentices home with a flail of his arm and a shouted command that they return at dawn the following morning. Each apprentice stood before him to bow, lining up one behind the other to bid their Maestro good evening before running off to dine with their wives, mothers, or bargain with a passing vendor for left over pieces of stock. Bowing slightly to his final pupil, Matthew sighed and ignored the quiet rumble in his stomach, his body urging him to eat though his appetite was nowhere to be found. After the door to the shop had shut, and Matthew stood alone between two pine tables littered with incomplete shells of violins, he rubbed a hand over his face, the stubble on his chin collecting the wood dust from his skin.
In the realm of difficult requests, the Count’s demand was not the most extreme he had encountered. In the Summer of 1668, his father had been approached by a member of the royal court, a spindly man with a face that Matthew found impossible to trust. He demanded a violin laden with jewels, the scroll adorned with rubies and gems the likes of which Matthew had never known existed. Ivory was expected, gold tuning pegs desired, it was such an impossible creation. His father had promised an attempt, but could not guarantee an outcome that suited his wishes - their supplier from Turin rarely brought precious stones, and when he did they were usually out of his father’s price range. It had taken an entire year for the piece to be completed, and his father had nearly run their family deep into debt in his attempts to build an instrument that transcended into finery. And while that piece remained only a difficult item of construction, the Count’s request demanded the violin to be something more than it actually could be.
It took a particular kind of person, a person made for music, to view the violin as a desirable pull. To Matthew it was an item of nostalgia, familial duty and respect, beauty, and art. The build of the violin was precious, but the music…the music was something more. He’d been raised by his father to believe that a violin’s perfection was contained within the look and the feel, that the wood and the craft were what gave the instrument its value. But, during the nights when Matthew would sneak out the window above his bed, when the evenings were dry and the moon would light his path, the evenings when he would run to the shop by himself and hold the instruments his father had made had taught him that construction was only half of the equation. The violin was only has beautiful as the player allowed it to be, only as arresting or magnificent as the player made it sound. The music had to be loved out of the strings, loved into the sound-holes with an affection one would give as though they were laying their new bride onto their marriage bed. If aggression was to be molded into beauty, it was the love that made the instrument sing. One without the other meant the instrument was only half complete.
It went against his very nature to place a violin in the hands of carelessness, to offer nonchalance the opportunity to impose its will on majesty. As a Catholic, he’d been raised by his priest, his mother, and his church to not pass judgement, for he did not have the right. But as a man, as a luthier, he’d earned the privilege to deem a man worthy of the music, and Dominic did not sound even remotely capable.
He found his feet taking him over dusted wood and down a hallway to his private work station, moving his body without his mind engaged within the process. Occasionally he found it strange, that so often his body would will him towards the thing he needed most before his brain could make the choice, but it had been happening long before the stress of adulthood and business had fully consumed him and so he’d learned to give in to the sensation rather than question his own volition. Within seconds of entering the room, he was pulling a violin from a small bookcase next to his prized cabinet. It was, by comparison, his most traditional piece, one of the first he’d made when he turned eighteen and spent weeks trying to discern how best to fix the gut cables into the pegs. There was no way he could sell it, his own personal experiment that changed the way his father continued production until his death, and so he’d stained it his favourite shade of ruddy brown, and watched the way the Willow transformed from such a dull tan into a blood red glow, deciding then to only use it for his personal use.
And so he pulled his horse hair bow from the wall peg and began to play. He played as he always did, with full bow length and an open soul that begged the violin to contain all his rage in its small body. He played the way he always did, until his fingers stung, until the blade of his right shoulder felt as though it would tear through his skin and spill blood down his back and ruin his shirt. He played until the tears burned behind his eyes, he played for his father, he played for himself; he played as though he were praying for the word of God to shatter his windows and engrave an answer to his questions into the plate of his chest.
It always started slowly, the outpouring of sentiment that stretched from his shoulder to his fingers and into the atmosphere, a deluge that broke past the walls of propriety and saturated the air with its sound. If speech died, if words and the voice of man were silenced, it would be music that would carry thought and feeling to the ear. What manner of man, so primitive and base, discovered that emotions were not just mere constrictions of the heart, but were a language so easily translated into sound? The heart was the metronome of life, guiding the emotion and the music, providing the rhythm for man and so few could truly see its worth.
Perhaps what he loved most, perhaps buried under years of self-tutelage and decades of developing an affair with an instrument that, for all intents and purposes, was entirely one sided, was that no matter how hard he pressed his strings, how deeply he poured his aggression into the bow and tore its hair, the violin always turned the music into love. Every song, every note, every single brush of the bow transformed violence into passion, sorrow into joy, and hate into love. If he were an uneducated man, a man holding the instrument without any conception as to how it was made, he would call it magic - he would resolutely declare that the physics of the machine held emotions within its core and only released them until it felt they could adequately please humanity.
And deep within the back of his mind, behind years of disappointment and harsh confrontations of reality, he still hoped there was a person who could do this for him, a person so like his instrument with the ability to receive emotion and give it back tenfold, someone who could turn fear and hate into exquisite sensations - someone who made the art of living unbearably sublime.
Only when his arm went stiff, his neck coated with a new layer of sweat and his soul exhausted, did he drop his violin on the shelf and sit in the plush, velvet chair at his desk. Collarbone burning from an hour’s worth of pressure, he smiled at the pain and laid his hands on his desk to admire the dark purple marks that had engrained themselves to his calloused fingertips. How like therapy it was, to release the core of the soul and experience the aftershock in silence. How like confession it was, the baring of the soul and the sins only to feel the freedom in the immediate aftermath. How wonderfully like worship music truly was.
Eventually, he placed his head in his hands and breathed deep, exhaling just as long, and let himself drift into a dreamless, black sleep.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The sounds of abrupt coughing, caught somewhere between polite acknowledgement and impatient disdain, woke Matthew with a start. With a jolt of his spine, he lifted his head from his arms, surroundings blurred with sleep and confusion, and released a soft grunt of contempt. It took several seconds to ground himself in reality, his eyes focusing on the things in front of him, the rusted post-setters and the window above his desk, pouring soft light through its dusted glass. Leaning back in his chair, he brought his wrist to his mouth, wiping residual saliva away, before turning to the man in the door with a glare.
He seemed so out of place, this stranger, as he shifted from foot to foot, his patent leather shoes grown filthy just by walking through the shop. It seemed as though he wore a grimace with a level of comfort that seemed unfit for such a brightly colored doublet, the deep red cloth and its white embroidery a stark contrast to his gloomy disposition.
'Can I help you?' Matthew asked, apathy seeping into his voice like polish to thirsty wood.
The man coughed again and bowed slightly, the motion itself an awkward jilt of his back as though he were acting out of resigned duty rather than his own desire. It seemed as though an invisible force had thrown him swiftly forward and raised him in an instant, turning him into a comical toy.
'Benvenuto, signore. I am Count Ignazio's personal page. I am here to collect you and bring you to his residence.'
Matthew blinked at him once before nodding in understanding, coming to rise from the chair with a groan.
‘Do you mind giving me one moment?’ he asked. The words fell from his mouth with a practiced politeness, though he headed for a small closet on the right side of the room and pulled a white, linen shirt a peg without waiting for an answer. He stripped without a pretense of shyness, removing his red shirt swiftly and dropping it to the floor. From the doorway, he heard the man release an offended gasp and mutter, ‘signore,’ before shuffling. Not bothering to look in his direction, Matthew pulled the new shirt over his head and assumed the man had turned around. They always did, men sent to gather him for some missed engagement after falling asleep at the shop, men who fixed him with a quizzical brow to wordlessly probe him why he had not gone home, why he never left, why he let the phantoms of his past linger with him through the night.
As usual, he slipped the shirt over his head and said nothing, tucking the shirt into his waistband before placing his own leather doublet over his shoulders. They never deserved an answer, for these were personal questions that went beyond polite inquisition and into familial worry. He was not obliged to answer and so he left them to their own absurd speculation.
The page coughed and began to speak.
‘Just wear whatever you have that is best, signore.’
Matt paused in lacing his doublet and rolled his eyes.
‘He shall receive me in whatever I choose to wear. We can’t all be adorned in satin,’ he muttered.
Walking with heavy footsteps towards the door, the sound of his leather boots echoing through the room, he tapped the man on his shoulder and gestured for him to lead the way.
He followed him through the shop, tossing his polish rag onto a table as he passed, gathering his measure tape and notepad in one swift motion. As they pushed the doors open, wide into the alley, Matthew breathed deep into his lungs, taking the dustless air into his blood. Rounding the corner, Matthew could not help chuckle.
‘No carriage?’ he asked gently.
The man fixed him with a scowl and Matthew released a loud snort at the man’s discontent. He wondered briefly if a carriage had not been sent for him because the Count had learned his lesson or if he simply did not want to dote on Matthew after he had so willingly, and easily, wounded his pride. In the back of his mind, he knew it was the latter, that the Count was a stately man who valued spectacle over practicality, and Matthew knew to keep to himself the truth that the Count was not the first of such encounters that he had experienced. There were others, many who came before him and many who would come after, who would foolishly make a show of themselves regardless of their audience while Matthew simply smiled out of obliged respect and waited for them leave his life as swiftly as they came.
The Count’s residence was a large villa to the east of town, towards the hazelnut fields of Massarotti and tucked behind trees and a large pathway flanked with a grassland Matthew imagined would contain sunflowers during the summer. To walk the distance from the shop to the villa took only thirty minutes, a short time that offered Matthew no opportunity to prepare for his meeting with the Count’s son, no time to replace his misgivings with the barriers of professionalism. Approaching the villa with quick steps, he straightened his back, lining his spine with the mental armor he wore when entering the home of the pretentious elite. It was a skill he had spent years perfecting, and the change in his demeanor was indiscernible to the untrained eye.
A large door beneath a wide archway opened upon their approach, a stately looking man there to greet them with stern lines fixed upon his face. Matthew opened his mouth to speak, but the pageboy merely lead him inside, the man shutting the door behind them. He was guided silently through a hallway adorned with fine wallpaper and large paintings of who he imagined were deceased family members and portraits of the Count’s wife. There was no time to admire the work, left only to absorb in passing as he was guided into a large room in the center of the home, which he assumed served only the purpose of receiving guests.
In the center of the room, a tall, blonde man turned to greet Matthew, a bored expression painted over his features. He signed, and waved the page away.
‘Thank you, Giacomo. That will be all.’
With a curt bow, Giacomo turned abruptly and left the room with brisk footsteps that resonated down the hall.
With a quirk of his eyebrow, Matthew slowly felt an unusual coil in his stomach, a thrill of excitement and anxiety at the realization that this was the Count’s son and that he had willingly allowed them to be alone together in a room. It brought a smirk to his mouth, this boy’s impropriety and his casual negligence of the rules of nobility. How interesting he made himself appear, how very interesting indeed.
‘My name is Dominic,’ he said, not bothering to extend his hand. ‘I only ask that you make this quick. I have a life I’d like to continue.’
How interesting he made himself appear and, oh, how swiftly he made the impression collapse like an ancient monument.
Stepping forward, Matthew pulled his measure tape from his pocket and cleared his throat.
‘With pleasure. Extend your right arm.’
‘Give me your name, signore. I would prefer to not have a stranger become so intimately familiar with my body.’
Matthew laughed. ‘Your concept of intimacy is skewed, I believe.’
‘Your name,’ Dominic said, gravely.
‘Did your father not tell you?’ Matthew asked, his voice light and casual.
Dominic remained silent, grey eyes fixing him with a cool stare. It was clear his father had, he simply wanted to hear the words from his own mouth.
‘Matthew Guarneri. Your right arm, please.’
There was a short hesitance in the moments between Dominic’s concession and the raising of his arm. Matthew nodded slightly and stepped forward, able to gauge the length of his arm with a single glance of his eye, using the tape only to be as accurate as possible. There was a rigid stillness, a practiced elegance to the way Dominic held himself, and it went against Matthew’s better judgement to admit, silently and within himself, that the boy’s posture would be ideal for violin performance. He supported his arm from the shoulder, the forearm and wrist presented with a natural balance that came only from a strong shoulder and bicep. But there left little room for emotional performance, and, like a horse that was a thoroughbred, it would be difficult for him to break his hold on his emotions, to break the restraint he had spent years building in the name of nobility to truly feel the music he would be playing.
‘It’s rather silly of my father, don’t you think, to give me an instrument as a means of distraction?’ Dominic asked, casually, addressing Matthew without meeting his eye. ‘A forced redirect of interest never did anyone any good.’
‘Perhaps,’ Matthew said, airily, ‘you aren’t giving the instrument enough credit.’
‘Credit?’ Dominic, scoffed. ‘It’s an instrument, it doesn’t need credit.’
‘Then,’ Matthew said, rolling his tape back up, ‘you will be destined to fail.’
‘Is that a challenge?’ Dominic said, head snapping to look at Matthew’s features.
It was Matthew’s turn to ignore his gaze as he wrote the numbers on his parchment.
‘It is whatever you perceive it to be, though it will always be honest.’
‘Do you mock me, signore?’ Dominic asked, though there was no air of challenge in his tone.
‘I am merely stating fact. Whether you choose to perceive it as an insult or a casual assessment of someone constructing an instrument in your name is your choice.’
Dominic eyed him conspicuously, taking his time to speak. In the silence, Matthew began drafting plans and notes for his violin, allowing his imagination to run wild with possibility.
‘I could have you arrested for your transgression,’ he finally said.
Matthew sighed, exasperation boiling his blood. ‘Yes, you and your father have made this abundantly clear,’ he said, bored with the exchange. ‘Did you have any requests for the instrument? Family crest in ivory, carving on the back, tuning pegs, strings, anything?’
Clearly taken aback with the subject change, Dominic went silent. Matthew peered at him over the parchment and waited for his answer. When none came, he took the opportunity to speak again.
‘This is going to be your personal instrument,’ he said, slowly. ‘Once the draft is complete and the piece is finished, I shall burn the notes and the design plan. It will be one of a kind. Did you not consider this, signore?’
There was an air of tension between them, though it was not uncomfortable, merely two strong men challenging each other in order to best assess their character.
Eventually, Dominic opened his mouth to speak with a sly grin on his face.
‘Make it as you see me,’ he said, calmly.
Matthew cocked his eyebrow, confused. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Construct your perception of me on this violin. I want your truth, not my father’s. I shall have Giacomo come collect you. I am confident you can find your way home without his service?’
He said the words so quickly, Matthew did not have an opportunity to process his request before Dominic had left through a private doorway, leaving nothing but tension and the scent of musk in the air.